A Naturalist Philosopher

Stephen Gaukroger’s Ph.D., and the first article he published, were about the philosophy of Gaston Bachelard. In this brief recollection I suggest that Bachelard’s ideas played a part in forming the conception of the history of science that underlies Stephen’s later work. I focus on Bachelard’s conceptions of a problematic, theory change, explanatory failure, scientific progress, and the relation between science and philosophy.